Master post for MacGyver fic: Welcome to the Camelverse
I figured it’s finally time I did master posts for my fic, or at least the MacGyver fic - not that I have all that many titles, but so I have somewhere to link people to when I manage to wheedle them into feeding my ego I’m asked about it.
Almost all of my fic basically takes place in the same ‘Mac-verse’, which can also be regarded as the same Mac-verse as most of lothithil's Macfic. It’s sometimes referred to as the ‘Camelverse’, and can be traced back to her wonderful fic, The Art of Smuggling Camels.
The full-length Camelverse fics are collected on ff.net and AO3 under the comm name Camel Smugglers Anonymous. The AO3 version of the collection doesn’t have all of Lothi’s works yet; for those, you’ll have to suffer with ff.net. (We’re working on that, I promise!) The short pieces, drabbles, vignettes, etc. can be found in the Short But Sweet collection (on ff.net, sorry).
Any of my fics can be read in any order; they depend on the show, not on each other. I think you’ll get a little more glee if you read Phoenix Rising before Aftershocks, and Revision before Reverb. If you haven’t seen an episode that’s referenced in a fic (or haven’t seen it this decade), no worries; I’ve had readers come back and say, “I liked that so much, I think I’ll actually watch the show now!” This, of course, is the ultimate glee.
My Camelverse fic, in chronological order, more or less:
Up a Long Ladder - set in November 1985; MacGyver and Pete are brought to Belfast, at the height of the Troubles. Novella; no episode tags. The story takes place during S1, so Mac and Pete are working for the DXS. This was my first completed fic since mumble mumble the early 1980s . . .
Phoenix Rising - summer 1986, with an Opening Gambit set in late spring of the same year. MacGyver’s first mission for the Phoenix Foundation. Novel; the story bridges the first season to the second, and got its start in chats with Lothi about how radically the show changed from S1 to S2 - a span of only a few months in Mac’s life, supposedly! Episode tags for Deathlock, The Assassin, Prisoner of Conscience, The Human Factor.
101 Uses for a Dead Uzi - set in the late 1980s, sometime before Aftershocks. Standalone short story; no episode tags. This story was actually spawned by a throwaway line in Aftershocks, and I had to go back and revise the line in the novel so I didn’t joss my own writing!
Aftershocks - set immediately after The Ten Percent Solution (late 1989 to early 1990), dealing with the messy aftermath of that episode: stolen artwork, Nazis, and neo-Nazis. Novel. If you enjoyed the recent release of The Monuments Men, you might get an extra bit of glee from this.
Revision - immediately after the series finale: the first leg of Mac and Sam’s road trip, and their first adventure together after The Stringer. Novella. Mac and Sam get to know each other, and also get into trouble, because, well, what else could possibly happen?
Reverb - set mostly in 2009, with an extended flashback sequence to 1996. The framing story begins with Mac retired and living off-grid; the novel was originally inspired by discussions of a MacGyver movie, and my own assertion that Mac would handle current technology just fine. Novel. More episode tags than I can list, since there are a lot of "where are they now" moments in it: Sam, Pete, and Nikki all appear, for starters. And oh, yeah -- it's a Murdoc story.
The rest of the Camelverse (Lothithil's stories):
The Art of Smuggling Camels -- How did Mac and Pete manage to meet for the first time twice?
Unbreakable Camels -- Mac and camels go together like peanut butter and quantum physics -- that is, not very well.
The Rainmakers -- novelization of the Pilot episode, with Pete Thornton undercover as 'Andy Colsen'.
Sleight of Mind -- Mac doesn't believe in ESP. Even when he catches a bad case of telepathy.
Weapon of Opportunity -- a serial killer is imitating Mac's MO.
Three Musketeers In Martinique -- Jack Dalton, Mike Forrester, and MacGyver, pre-season.
Most of my other Macfic - short pieces, smut, crack and crossovers:
Off Track - vignette; tag for Partners, Collision Course.
Walking on Air - drabble suite for Widowmaker.
Six Points of the Compass - a six-part drabble suite, from a “six beverages” challenge. Follows Mac along a temporal and geographic arc.
Two Troubleshooters Walk Into a Bar - a post-Stringer moment with Sam. The young must sometimes lead their elders, but not into temptation.
Tutorial - smut and nothing but. More smut (not just mine!) can be found on the macgyverdeleted comm.
Boy Scout - starts innocently (sort of), ends smuttily. No duct tape involved.
Misappliance - triple drabble, all dialogue, plus a microwave, and this week only we’ll throw in a toaster!
X Marks the Spot - novella-length: written for the Crossover round of Stargate Alphabet Soup. Mac ends up at an archeological dig with a difference.
Dark Laundry! - Choose Your Own Adventure! Audience participation; a work in progress. Hasn’t gotten all that dark yet, but we’ll see where it goes.
The Name's MacGyver - non-epic poetry.
Better With Penguins - crack compiled from the weirder moments of fic_rush. Companion collection to The Penguin Guide to Gate Travel, and even sillier.
Other notes:
In this ‘verse, we stick really close to canon, even - especially! - when canon continues inconsistencies. Part of the fun and challenge is making the inconsistencies work, in fact: the seminal work by Lothithil explores how Mac and Pete originally met in Jack Dalton’s taxi and also met years before on camelback. You’ll see a lot of familiar faces from the show, and bump into a lot of episode tags. Many of the works started with a moment in the show that spawned the thought, “Okay, but what happened next”? or “What happened beforehand?”
In the Camelverse, series events are usually held to have occurred, more or less, at about the time of a given episode’s original airing. For example, Pete’s promotion to Deputy Director of the DXS occurred late in 1985, and he and Mac left the DXS and joined Phoenix between spring and autumn of 1986.
MacGyver is heterosexual, serially promiscuous, unmarried, has no permanent romantic relationships, and has only one child. He’s an only child himself; he does not have a secret twin brother named Jack, or a secret second identity as an Air Force officer with short hair. ;-) His parents are Ellen and James MacGyver; he is not adopted, or a clone, or an alien, or a time traveler. He has an endless supply of friends, but no nieces (or nephews), wards, young female cousins, adopted daughters, or plucky female sidekicks. You get the drift.
Mac never willingly uses his first name and opposes any attempt by others to do so. His son is known by his own nickname, Sam, which looks silly in all caps, so I don’t write it that way.
Mac doesn’t smoke, drink, or swear in a major way. People around him do. Most of my stories include a language warning: take the warning seriously.
Stories in the Camelverse tend to include whumpage; Lothi and I actually have a pledge that every story should include at least one scene in which Mac is “shirtless, wet, or whumped”. We often manage all three, although not at the same time. (Lothi did pull off the hat trick in Three Musketeers in Martinique, which is worth reading just for that.)
Lothi’s Camelverse stories don’t usually include sex scenes. Mine often do - although I can’t write really graphic scenes, I do my best! The AO3 version of any given story will include the sex scenes; the ff.net version will not. The "Deleted Scenes", on their own, are also on the macgyverdeleted comm.
We aim to keep the violence and whumpage realistic, more realistic than the show. In fact, we generally aim to capture the show’s flavour while holding ourselves to a higher standard of realism. This applies to the MacGyverisms as well as the whumpage. I'm actually very fond of writing MacGyverisms, although they turn out to be fiendishly difficult to pull off in a fiction narrative!
And, whew. Done! Until I write some more.
Almost all of my fic basically takes place in the same ‘Mac-verse’, which can also be regarded as the same Mac-verse as most of lothithil's Macfic. It’s sometimes referred to as the ‘Camelverse’, and can be traced back to her wonderful fic, The Art of Smuggling Camels.
The full-length Camelverse fics are collected on ff.net and AO3 under the comm name Camel Smugglers Anonymous. The AO3 version of the collection doesn’t have all of Lothi’s works yet; for those, you’ll have to suffer with ff.net. (We’re working on that, I promise!) The short pieces, drabbles, vignettes, etc. can be found in the Short But Sweet collection (on ff.net, sorry).
Any of my fics can be read in any order; they depend on the show, not on each other. I think you’ll get a little more glee if you read Phoenix Rising before Aftershocks, and Revision before Reverb. If you haven’t seen an episode that’s referenced in a fic (or haven’t seen it this decade), no worries; I’ve had readers come back and say, “I liked that so much, I think I’ll actually watch the show now!” This, of course, is the ultimate glee.
My Camelverse fic, in chronological order, more or less:
Up a Long Ladder - set in November 1985; MacGyver and Pete are brought to Belfast, at the height of the Troubles. Novella; no episode tags. The story takes place during S1, so Mac and Pete are working for the DXS. This was my first completed fic since mumble mumble the early 1980s . . .
Phoenix Rising - summer 1986, with an Opening Gambit set in late spring of the same year. MacGyver’s first mission for the Phoenix Foundation. Novel; the story bridges the first season to the second, and got its start in chats with Lothi about how radically the show changed from S1 to S2 - a span of only a few months in Mac’s life, supposedly! Episode tags for Deathlock, The Assassin, Prisoner of Conscience, The Human Factor.
101 Uses for a Dead Uzi - set in the late 1980s, sometime before Aftershocks. Standalone short story; no episode tags. This story was actually spawned by a throwaway line in Aftershocks, and I had to go back and revise the line in the novel so I didn’t joss my own writing!
Aftershocks - set immediately after The Ten Percent Solution (late 1989 to early 1990), dealing with the messy aftermath of that episode: stolen artwork, Nazis, and neo-Nazis. Novel. If you enjoyed the recent release of The Monuments Men, you might get an extra bit of glee from this.
Revision - immediately after the series finale: the first leg of Mac and Sam’s road trip, and their first adventure together after The Stringer. Novella. Mac and Sam get to know each other, and also get into trouble, because, well, what else could possibly happen?
Reverb - set mostly in 2009, with an extended flashback sequence to 1996. The framing story begins with Mac retired and living off-grid; the novel was originally inspired by discussions of a MacGyver movie, and my own assertion that Mac would handle current technology just fine. Novel. More episode tags than I can list, since there are a lot of "where are they now" moments in it: Sam, Pete, and Nikki all appear, for starters. And oh, yeah -- it's a Murdoc story.
The rest of the Camelverse (Lothithil's stories):
The Art of Smuggling Camels -- How did Mac and Pete manage to meet for the first time twice?
Unbreakable Camels -- Mac and camels go together like peanut butter and quantum physics -- that is, not very well.
The Rainmakers -- novelization of the Pilot episode, with Pete Thornton undercover as 'Andy Colsen'.
Sleight of Mind -- Mac doesn't believe in ESP. Even when he catches a bad case of telepathy.
Weapon of Opportunity -- a serial killer is imitating Mac's MO.
Three Musketeers In Martinique -- Jack Dalton, Mike Forrester, and MacGyver, pre-season.
Most of my other Macfic - short pieces, smut, crack and crossovers:
Off Track - vignette; tag for Partners, Collision Course.
Walking on Air - drabble suite for Widowmaker.
Six Points of the Compass - a six-part drabble suite, from a “six beverages” challenge. Follows Mac along a temporal and geographic arc.
Two Troubleshooters Walk Into a Bar - a post-Stringer moment with Sam. The young must sometimes lead their elders, but not into temptation.
Tutorial - smut and nothing but. More smut (not just mine!) can be found on the macgyverdeleted comm.
Boy Scout - starts innocently (sort of), ends smuttily. No duct tape involved.
Misappliance - triple drabble, all dialogue, plus a microwave, and this week only we’ll throw in a toaster!
X Marks the Spot - novella-length: written for the Crossover round of Stargate Alphabet Soup. Mac ends up at an archeological dig with a difference.
Dark Laundry! - Choose Your Own Adventure! Audience participation; a work in progress. Hasn’t gotten all that dark yet, but we’ll see where it goes.
The Name's MacGyver - non-epic poetry.
Better With Penguins - crack compiled from the weirder moments of fic_rush. Companion collection to The Penguin Guide to Gate Travel, and even sillier.
Other notes:
In this ‘verse, we stick really close to canon, even - especially! - when canon continues inconsistencies. Part of the fun and challenge is making the inconsistencies work, in fact: the seminal work by Lothithil explores how Mac and Pete originally met in Jack Dalton’s taxi and also met years before on camelback. You’ll see a lot of familiar faces from the show, and bump into a lot of episode tags. Many of the works started with a moment in the show that spawned the thought, “Okay, but what happened next”? or “What happened beforehand?”
In the Camelverse, series events are usually held to have occurred, more or less, at about the time of a given episode’s original airing. For example, Pete’s promotion to Deputy Director of the DXS occurred late in 1985, and he and Mac left the DXS and joined Phoenix between spring and autumn of 1986.
MacGyver is heterosexual, serially promiscuous, unmarried, has no permanent romantic relationships, and has only one child. He’s an only child himself; he does not have a secret twin brother named Jack, or a secret second identity as an Air Force officer with short hair. ;-) His parents are Ellen and James MacGyver; he is not adopted, or a clone, or an alien, or a time traveler. He has an endless supply of friends, but no nieces (or nephews), wards, young female cousins, adopted daughters, or plucky female sidekicks. You get the drift.
Mac never willingly uses his first name and opposes any attempt by others to do so. His son is known by his own nickname, Sam, which looks silly in all caps, so I don’t write it that way.
Mac doesn’t smoke, drink, or swear in a major way. People around him do. Most of my stories include a language warning: take the warning seriously.
Stories in the Camelverse tend to include whumpage; Lothi and I actually have a pledge that every story should include at least one scene in which Mac is “shirtless, wet, or whumped”. We often manage all three, although not at the same time. (Lothi did pull off the hat trick in Three Musketeers in Martinique, which is worth reading just for that.)
Lothi’s Camelverse stories don’t usually include sex scenes. Mine often do - although I can’t write really graphic scenes, I do my best! The AO3 version of any given story will include the sex scenes; the ff.net version will not. The "Deleted Scenes", on their own, are also on the macgyverdeleted comm.
We aim to keep the violence and whumpage realistic, more realistic than the show. In fact, we generally aim to capture the show’s flavour while holding ourselves to a higher standard of realism. This applies to the MacGyverisms as well as the whumpage. I'm actually very fond of writing MacGyverisms, although they turn out to be fiendishly difficult to pull off in a fiction narrative!
And, whew. Done! Until I write some more.